09/30/2012

Radley: Ticats still a mystery, even to themselves

Watched both the CFL games last night, including the Argo win over the Bombers. Hamilton is now third in the East, four points up on Winnipeg and four points behind Toronto. The Double Blue play their next three games at home (Saskatchewan, Montreal, Winnipeg) while the Ticats have just two games at Ivor Wynne.

The Ticats' road woes are part of Scott Radley's look at the state of the team.

By Scott Radley

We’ve now had plenty of time to watch
them, analyze them, and try to predict what they’ll do next. Yet,
even 13 weeks into this CFL season, trying to figure out this
Hamilton Tiger-Cats team or anticipate its next move remains more
impossible than completing a 5,000-piece puzzle called Polar Bears
Drinking Milk In A Driving Blizzard.

One week they’re atrocious. The next
week they’re the best team the world has ever seen. Followed by
another turd-worthy performance. And then a polished gem.

Squadrons of football experts and
amateur psychoanalysts have thrown in the towel on coming up with a
good explanation for this. So, head coach George Cortez, have you got
anything?

We’ll take that as a no. How about
you, Dave Stala? Any thoughts on why you guys can be so bad one week
and so good the next?

“I have no answer for that,” he
says shaking his head.

If anyone’s going to have a working
theory, it’s surely got to be Canada’s smartest person. Tell us
you’ve got something Peter Dyakowski.

Evil twin brothers are stealing the
Ticat uniforms and playing in them every other week?

“There’s two teams,” he deadpans.
“I think the personnel guys released all of them, so we’ll be
good the rest of the way.”

The weird part is, that probably makes
more sense than anything else.

Thing is, while there were plenty of
smiles among the good twins in the bass-pumping rave party of a Ticat
locker-room after Friday’s huge Canadian Football League victory,
the players better make sure those evil twins are truly exorcized
before anyone starts printing playoff tickets. Because one rather
sizeable issue remains for this team.

“I don’t think you can say we have
everything fixed because we’ve been up and down,” Dyakowski says,
honestly and absolutely correctly. “We still have to tackle the
road.”

Ah yes, the road.

Winning at home hasn’t been the
problem lately. Four of the Ticats’ five wins this year have come
at Ivor Wynne. The team actually has a winning record here. Almost
all of its solid performances have come on home turf. More
remarkably, the Cats have now beaten Montreal five times in a row at
Balsam Avenue.

The road meanwhile, has been a barren
wasteland. The Cats have absorbed four straight losses away from the
friendly confines with the last two being complete stinkers.

Worse? Edmonton is up next and Hamilton
never wins there. Nine of the Cats’ past 10 trips to Commonwealth
have ended in tears. The franchise’s last victory there was back in
2006 by two points.

Yet the road is this team’s path to
the playoffs. Three of its past five are somewhere other than here.
The Cats are probably going to have to win a couple of those to get
in.

If they somehow manage to squeak into
the playoffs without doing that, they’d have to contend every
playoff game away from home, which doesn’t bode well. Even
Dyakowski acknowledges that.

“If we limp into the playoffs, we’re
likely still DOA,” he says. “We need to get a streak going.”

Problem is, there’s just simply no
empirical evidence at this point that Hamilton will back up Friday’s
win with another this Friday. Doesn’t mean it can’t happen or
won’t happen. Just that it hasn’t.

But it has to. Beat Edmonton and
Hamilton can all but eliminate the crossover. Then the Cats would
only have Toronto and Winnipeg to worry about for the post-season.

Lose, though, and once again the path
becomes cluttered and muddy.

Just as bad, lose next Friday to a team
that’s lost five in a row and for the second time in a month an
impressive home win will look like nothing more than a fluke by a
team too unpredictable for its own good.

Can't argue with anything here. While I would love to predict that we will hand Edmonton a loss, just like the Bombers of a couple of weeks ago, they will be desperate for a win after their losing streak and they will be playing at home. However one cannot discount that the Ticats lone road win came at Mosiac where they hadn't won in 12(?) years, and even the league leading Lions fell to defeat last night. It appears that anything is possible. Hopefully all the evil twin brothers are long gone and won't show up n Edmonton this week but even the good guys will have to be prepared for some determined Eskimos!